Japan does not enforce child custody orders from foreign countries. (Discrimination Against Foreign Parents)

There are many cases of a non-Japanese parent having a custody order in another country, and the Japanese parent abducting the child to Japan. Once this happens, the Japanese courts will not recognize these orders.   The custodial parent can pursue this in Japanese court, but court cases in Japan can take years.  Even after several years, the final argument often ends up being that the child is now acclimated to Japan, so should not be removed from the country.  Documentation from Japanese court decrees contained within the cases below make this quite clear.

At present, Japan does not enforce child custody orders from foreign countries, nor is parental kidnapping deemed a crime there.  (Source: a report written by the Directorate of Legal Research of the Law Library of Congress in response to requests from the US Congress. (cached copy))

The Department of State is not aware of any case in which a child taken from the United States by one parent has been ordered returned to the United States by Japanese courts, even when the left-behind parent has a United States custody decree.  (Source: US State Dept website "International Parental Abduction - Japan" (cached copy))

U.S. court custody decisions are not enforceable in Japan....The Japanese government will not refuse entry to one of its citizens, even if that citizen is a dual-national child subject to a U.S. court-based custody decision.  (Source: US Consular Information Sheet for Japan (cached copy))

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